1. The Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to a system and method for delivering a content stream and advertisements to a user, and more particularly, but not necessarily entirely, to delivering targeted advertisements to a user.
2. Description of Related Art
Traditional advertisement methods involve broadcasting advertising and programming material together to multiple recipients in the same geographic area. For example, advertising and programming material may be broadcast through a television or radio station in a content stream.
For both television and radio advertising, historically, advertisers have been forced to purchase time slots in delivering their message. Time slots are selected based on demographic information associated with the content. A. C. Nielson is the industry's main provider of such demographic information for television. For example, in order for an advertiser to reach a 35-year old woman, the advertisers may be forced to advertise on multiple channels where the research indicates a significant presence of such women. This is an indirect approach to reaching the target audience with built in inefficiencies and redundancies. Furthermore, the advertiser is unable to create direct integrated and synchronized interactions between different advertising platforms. Television and radio are one-way mediums that permit low cost distribution to a large geographic area. That is, all households within the geographic area receive the same programming and advertisements. The advertisement is the same regardless of who is the actual viewer. Satellite and cable delivery systems may have the ability to provide customized advertisements based on a more refined geographic region. However, these media lack the ability of targeting individual users and doing so across a plurality of platforms.
Internet Protocol Television (“IPTV”) is another medium available for advertising. Using IPTV, programming is directly streamed from a remote server to a household. Although IPTV's ability to target a unique household is greater than the previous broadcast methods described above, IPTV is still unable to synchronize or integrate an advertising campaign across other platforms.
Further, there is presently little or no ability to synchronize advertising across different platforms. For example, if an advertiser wanted to combine a television advertisement with a follow-up direct mail piece, the advertiser would blanket advertisements on multiple channels during multiple time slots in trying to reach the target audience. At some point, once the advertiser felt that the saturation level had been reached, a follow up direct mail piece would be sent out. The advertiser has no way of confirming if the television advertisement had been seen by the targeted individual prior to the direct mail piece arriving. In fact, it's quite possible that the direct mail piece would arrive before the targeted individual would even see the advertisement.
As mentioned, television and direct mail represent two different platforms that are available to advertisers. Internet advertisements through banner ads and search result placements are other platforms that are available to advertisers. In addition, DVD/VHS, Gaming, PVR, and IPTV are additional platforms which can be selected by advertisers in reaching their target audiences. However, there is no ability to integrate or synchronize these platforms based on current technologies, platforms, and configurations.
The prior art is thus characterized by several disadvantages that are addressed by the present disclosure. The present disclosure minimizes, and in some aspects eliminates, the above-mentioned failures, and other problems, by utilizing the methods and structural features described herein. The features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by the practice of the disclosure without undue experimentation. The features and advantages of the disclosure may be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.